Effectiveness of Crop Pollination by Wild Pollinators Improves with Diversity of Bee Species

A brown-belted bumblebee at work, pollinating a blueberry flower. It belongs to one of the more than 100 species of wild bees Rachael Winfree and her colleagues collected and identified in 48 farms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Photo: Rachael Winfree

A study conducted on farms in New Jersey and Pennsylvania by professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources Rachel Winfree and colleagues, demonstrated the relationship of diversity in wild pollinators and crop pollination in accordance with spatial scale. The research showed that to provide crop pollination in natural systems, the number of bee species must increase by at least one order of magnitude compared with that in limited scale field experiments.